The origin of the Usher of the Black Rod goes back to early fourteenth century England . Today, with no royal duties to perform, the Usher knocks on the doors of the House of Commons with the Black Rod at the start of Parliament to summon the members. The rod is a symbol for the authority of debate in the upper house.
We of The Black Rod have adopted the symbol to knock some sense and the right questions into the heads of Legislators, pundits, and other opinion makers.

About Me

We are citizen journalists in Winnipeg. When not breaking exclusive stories, we analyze news coverage by the mainstream media and highlight bias, ignorance, incompetence, flawed logic, missed angles and, where warranted, good work. We serve as the only overall news monitors in the province of Manitoba. We do the same with politicians (who require even more monitoring.) EMAIL: black_rod_usher@yahoo.com

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Latest poll a pall for the NDP

"...they've missed the biggest political story in the province---the stark panic in the NDP government."

That's
what we wrote one month ago when we sifted through the results of two
federal byelections in Manitoba---and uncovered the story that all the
pundits had overlooked as they gushed about Justin Trudeau (despite his
failure to win the seats for the Liberals).

Probe
Research and the Winnipeg Free Press finally put some meat on the
bones of the story last week with a new poll showing the NDP a
devastating 22 percentage points behind the Progressive Conservatives
in voter preference.

We took the weekend to swim through the numbers to dig out still more angles to the story.

* the NDP have lost their last bastion of support---voters with incomes of less than $30,000.

In
the last Probe election poll six months ago, the NDP had a clear
advantage with low-income voters, pulling 44 percent of their support to
the Tories' 33 percent. No more.

Today,
the Dippers can barely count on 22 percent of the low-income
electorate. The Tories? 41 percent. A rise in the sales tax, not to
mention higher electricity and heating costs, hits the poorer folk first
and hardest. Who knew?

NDP
MLA's have been making almost daily announcements of millions of
dollars being spent on this and that, and every time the MLA stands
behind or beside a podium bearing the message Focused on What Matters Most.
Obviously there's a huge disconnect between what matters most for most
people and what matters for the NDP and the unions who feast on the
spending.

The only income category where NDP support went up (4 percentage points) is upper-middle ($60,000 to $99,000), where you find the civil servants, teachers, and others with government jobs. Still, the PC's are far ahead there too with 46 percent support to the NDP's 30.

* the Liberal Party has a pulse for the first time in 13 years with a provincial support level of 20 percent.

The
rise of the Liberals out of the mid-teens (where they were most of the
past decade) and pre-teens (where they wound up in the last election)
corresponds with a sharp drop in support for the Green Party.

A
six-point drop in men 55-plus supporting the Tories and an equal boost
in Liberal support is odd. A seven-point drop in women 55-plus and a
six percentage point increase in mature women supporting the Liberals
is too.

The last
time the Manitoba Liberal Party had support in the heady twenties was
in the 1995 provincial election (the one after the Liberals soared into
Official Opposition). The Conservatives won the '95 vote with 31
seats, the NDP took 23 and Libs 7. The Tories took 43 percent of the
votes, NDP 33 percent and Liberals 24 percent.

*
22 percent of Manitobans were undecided or refused to say which party
they would support in the Probe poll. That's up significantly from the
13 percent who passed in June.

We're
betting this is NDP voters who don't know which way to fall. They've
jumped off the NDP train, but haven't decided yet whether to sit the
next election out or to park their vote with the Liberals--or Other.

Greg
Selinger, the dirtiest politician in Manitoba, has managed to unite
the young and the old, the poor and the middle class, the richest and
the poorest, the best educated and the worst, in solidarity --- against
the New Democratic Party he leads.